Fugitives & Refugees

A WALK IN PORTLAND, OREGON

Chuck Palahniuk

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material to:

Anton Pace and Delta Cafe, for the recipes "Fritters," "Fritter Dip," and "Black-Eyed Peas." Reprinted by permission of the Delta Cafe.

Le Happy Bar, Inc., for the recipe "Faux Vegan Crepes." Copyright © 2002 by Le Happy Bar, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Le Happy Bar, Inc.

Michael Cox and Wild Abandon, for the recipe "Dean Blair's hemon-havender Scones." Reprinted by permission of Michael Cox and Wild Abandon.

For my grandmother, Ruth Tallent

1920-2002

"E veryone in Portland is living a minimum of three lives," says Katherine Dunn, the author of Geek Love. She says, "Everyone has at least three identities."

She's sitting in the window of her apartment in Northwest Portland, rolling cigarettes and smoking them, her long blond hair parted in the middle and tied back. She's wearing black-framed glasses. The radiators clank and a siren goes by, four stories below on Glisan Street.

"They're a grocery store checker, an archaeologist, and a biker guy," she says. "Or they're a poet, a drag queen, and a bookstore clerk."

Rolling another cigarette, she says, "It's tricky because all the rich people are in disguise. You never know when the scruffy guy across the counter could be someone rich enough to buy the store, chew it up, and spit it out."